Penn State News - Science and TechnologyPopular news on Science and Technology from Penn Statehttp://www.psu.edu/
en-usPenn State University Relationsnews@psu.edu (Penn State News)Thu, 11 Aug 2016 15:51:17 -0400Mon, 12 Sep 2016 09:02:40 -0400Penn State Harrisburg Summer STEM program wows high school studentshttp://news.psu.edu/story/420654/2016/08/12/impact/penn-state-harrisburg-summer-stem-program-wows-high-school-students
Penn State Harrisburg's two-week Summer STEM Enrichment Program introduced high school students to the different scientific disciplines involved in STEM, helping to give them a better sense of what major they might pursue, what careers are available, and what learning at the university level would be like.
http://news.psu.edu/story/420654/2016/08/12/impact/penn-state-harrisburg-summer-stem-program-wows-high-school-studentsFri, 12 Aug 2016 08:42 -0400Penn State News - Science and TechnologyLuerssen Science Building dedication slated for April 20http://news.psu.edu/story/402520/2016/04/06/public-events/luerssen-science-building-dedication-slated-april-20
Penn State Berks will hold a dedication ceremony for the Luerssen Science Building from 1 to 2:30 p.m. April 20. The ceremony will feature brief addresses from college and community leaders, followed by tours of the facility.
http://news.psu.edu/story/402520/2016/04/06/public-events/luerssen-science-building-dedication-slated-april-20Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:33 -0400Penn State News - Science and TechnologySustainability Institute seeks proposals for graduate research contesthttp://news.psu.edu/story/278084/2013/05/30/science-and-technology/sustainability-institute-seeks-proposals-graduate
For the second year, Penn State will participate in the 2013 Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Awards. SISCA is designed to promote forward thinking in social and environmental responsibility; while also acknowledging the energy, commitment, and enthusiasm of students and their professors who support their innovations. Graduate students and faculty from Penn State are encouraged to join an international field of universities that are involved in the program.
http://news.psu.edu/story/278084/2013/05/30/science-and-technology/sustainability-institute-seeks-proposals-graduateFri, 06 Sep 2013 08:40 -0400Penn State News - Science and TechnologyRecord-breaking high-energy particles detected by telescope buried in Antarctichttp://news.psu.edu/story/277206/2013/05/17/science-and-technology/record-breaking-high-energy-particles-detected
A massive telescope buried in the Antarctic ice has detected 28 extremely high-energy neutrinos -- elementary particles that likely originate outside our solar system. Two of these neutrinos had energies many thousands of times higher than the highest-energy neutrino that any man-made particle accelerator has ever produced, according to a team of IceCube Neutrino Observatory researchers that includes Penn State scientists. These new record-breaking neutrinos had energies greater than 1,000,000,000,000,000 volts or, as the scientists say, 1 peta-electron volt (PeV).
http://news.psu.edu/story/277206/2013/05/17/science-and-technology/record-breaking-high-energy-particles-detectedFri, 17 May 2013 11:07 -0400Penn State News - Science and TechnologyGene offers clues to new treatments for a harmful blood clotting disorder http://news.psu.edu/story/276300/2013/05/07/health-and-medicine/gene-offers-clues-new-treatments-harmful-blood-clotting
A gene associated with both protection against bacterial infection and excessive blood clotting could offer new insights into treatment strategies for deep-vein thrombosis -- the formation of a harmful clot in a deep vein. The gene produces an enzyme that, if inhibited via a specific drug therapy, could offer hope to patients prone to deep-vein clots, such as those that sometimes form in the legs during lengthy airplane flights or during recuperation after major surgery. The research, which was led by Yanming Wang, a Penn State associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Denisa Wagner, senior author with decades of research on thrombosis at the Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard University Medical School, will be published in the Online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week ending May 10.
http://news.psu.edu/story/276300/2013/05/07/health-and-medicine/gene-offers-clues-new-treatments-harmful-blood-clottingTue, 07 May 2013 15:38 -0400Penn State News - Science and TechnologySustainability Institute seeks proposals for graduate research contesthttp://news.psu.edu/story/264008/2013/02/14/academics/sustainability-institute-seeks-proposals-graduate-research-contest
For the second year, Penn State will participate in the 2013 Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Awards. SISCA is designed to promote forward thinking in social and environmental responsibility; while also acknowledging the energy, commitment, and enthusiasm of students and their professors who support their innovations. Graduate students and faculty from Penn State are encouraged to join an international field of universities that are involved in the program.
http://news.psu.edu/story/264008/2013/02/14/academics/sustainability-institute-seeks-proposals-graduate-research-contestThu, 14 Feb 2013 08:59 -0500Penn State News - Science and TechnologyMetamaterials manipulate light on a microchiphttp://news.psu.edu/story/144328/2012/11/26/research/metamaterials-manipulate-light-microchip
Using a combination of the new tools of metamaterials and transformation optics, engineers at Penn State have developed designs for miniaturized optical devices that can be used in chip-based optical integrated circuits, the equivalent of the integrated electronic circuits that make possible computers and cellphones. In a paper in a new online journal, Light: Science and Applications, published by Nature Publishing Group, Douglas Werner, professor of electrical engineering, and his postdoctoral researcher Qi Wu and doctoral student Jeremiah Turpin present a unified theory for designing practical devices on a single platform using the new field of transformation optics.
http://news.psu.edu/story/144328/2012/11/26/research/metamaterials-manipulate-light-microchipMon, 26 Nov 2012 11:49 -0500Penn State News - Science and TechnologyWormholes from centuries-old art prints reveal historyhttp://news.psu.edu/story/144639/2012/11/20/wormholes-centuries-old-art-prints-reveal-history
By examining art printed from woodblocks spanning five centuries, Blair Hedges, a professor of biology at Penn State University, has identified the species responsible for making the ever-present wormholes in European printed art since the Renaissance. The hole-makers, two species of wood-boring beetles, are widely distributed today, but the "wormhole record," as Hedges calls it, reveals a different pattern in the past, where the two species met along a zone across central Europe like a battle line of two armies. The research, which is the first of its kind to use printed art as a "trace fossil" to precisely date species and to identify their locations, will be published in the journal Biology Letters on 21 November 2012.
http://news.psu.edu/story/144639/2012/11/20/wormholes-centuries-old-art-prints-reveal-historyTue, 20 Nov 2012 19:01 -0500Penn State News - Science and TechnologyHepatitis C treatment's side effects can now be studied in the labhttp://news.psu.edu/story/144474/2012/11/16/hepatitis-c-treatments-side-effects-can-now-be-studied-lab
The adverse side effects of certain hepatitis C medications can now be replicated and observed in Petri dishes and test tubes, thanks to a research team led by Craig Cameron, the Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State. "The new method not only will help us to understand the recent failures of hepatitis C antiviral drugs in some patients in clinical trials," said Cameron. "It also could help to identify medications that eliminate all adverse effects." The team's findings, published in the current issue of the journal PLOS Pathogens, may help pave the way toward the development of safer and more-effective treatments for hepatitis C, as well as other pathogens such as SARS and West Nile virus.
First author Jamie Arnold, a research associate in Cameron's lab at Penn State, explained that the hepatitis C virus (HCV), which affects more than 170,000,000 people worldwide, is the leading cause of liver disease and, although antiviral treatments are effective in many patients, they cause serious side effects in others.
http://news.psu.edu/story/144474/2012/11/16/hepatitis-c-treatments-side-effects-can-now-be-studied-labFri, 16 Nov 2012 14:28 -0500Penn State News - Science and TechnologyExpansion of universe measured in an era before dark energy takes overhttp://news.psu.edu/story/144634/2012/11/13/expansion-universe-measured-era-dark-energy-takes-over
For the past 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe has been powered by a mysterious repulsive force known as dark energy. Now, thanks to a new technique for measuring the three-dimensional structure of the distant universe, scientists in an international team within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), including an astronomer at Penn State, have made the first measurement of the rate of this cosmic expansion as it was just 3 billion years after the Big Bang. "Observations in the past 15 years have revealed that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating," said Donald Schneider, Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, a coauthor of the study. "Most cosmological models predict that when the universe was young, dark energy had little influence on the expansion; at that time the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe was dominated by gravitation, which is an attractive force that acted to slow the expansion. The new SDSS-III observations are an important probe of this early era."
http://news.psu.edu/story/144634/2012/11/13/expansion-universe-measured-era-dark-energy-takes-overTue, 13 Nov 2012 10:35 -0500Penn State News - Science and Technology